Americans Love To Complain About Flying, But Probably Less Than You Think

Nearly half of all Americans – 45 percent - flew aboard a commercial airliner last year, and if you believe the carriers’ Washington lobby group, 80% of them were satisfied with their flying experience.

For those doing the math in their heads right now, that means about 144 million of us took to the commercial skies in 2015. And more than 115 million of those did not file formal complaints, whine to their families and friends, or write nasty letters to airline CEOs telling them how lousy their planes and people are. Well, at least they said they were satisfied. But who knows? Maybe they did whine a little.

Those are a couple of quick and obvious conclusions that can be drawn quickly from a new study done for Airlines For America – better known these days as A4A and formerly known as the Air Transport Association.

Americans' love of air travel is so strong that nearly half of us each year fly commercially despite the long lines, the hassles, the cramped seating, reduced levels of service, fees and confusion. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

And here’s a couple of more:

U.S. airlines aren’t nearly as awful as we in the media and those in the entertainment industry whose job it is to amuse us make them seem to be.

U.S. airlines are still pretty awful. After all, what would happen at your company, business, or institution if 20 percent of the people who visited your place or business or used your services did file formal complaints, did whine to their family and friends, or did write nasty letters to the CEO?

Is that second one a fair conclusion? Probably not. After all, we’ve all been conditioned pretty thoroughly to whine and complain about airlines. It’s a great American tradition that goes all the way back to the late 1950s and early 1960s to when a guy named Jack Paar was telling snarky airline jokes on the late night TV show now hosted by Jimmy Fallon (who wasn’t even born until Johnny Carson had been sitting in Paar’s old seat for a dozen years).

Still, no one – except maybe the glass is half-full squad at A4A – would argue that disappointing (or really ticking off) 20 percent of your customers in a year is a good thing. That we continue to put up with that situation with only a 20 percent dissatisfaction rate is just further evidence of how inured both airline industry executives and we members of the “self-loading cargo” class have become to the awful status quo.

As discussed at length in a four-part series in this space last summer, don’t expect the airlines to make any dramatic improvements that would lower the percent of passengers dissatisfied by their airline experiences. Still, there is some more encouraging news coming from A4A’s study, which involved surveying travelers around the nation on one day in December. The survey got 3,019 responses. They include:

That 45 percent of Americans having flown commercially in 2015 represents significant growth from 39 percent in 1998, 24 percent at the outset of airline deregulation in 1979, and 21 percent in 1971.

81 percent of adult Americans report that they have flown commercially at least once in their lifetimes. In 1979 only about 65 percent of adult Americans had ever flown. In 1971 only 49 percent could say that.

Last year 48 percent of American took a commercial flight for leisure purposes, compared with 31 percent who flew for business purposes and 21 percent who flew for personal-but-not-leisure purposes. But that does not necessarily mean more trips were taken last year for non-business than business reasons. Business travelers tend to fly far more frequently. And since 88 percent of those Americans who traveled by commercial airline in 2015 said that at least one of their trips was for leisure purposes it is obvious that a large percentage of those roughly 115 million Americans who flew for leisure reasons last also flew one or more times last year for business reasons.

Younger people and those with household incomes below $50,000 are a lot more likely to travel by air today than they were in 1998, the last time this survey was conducted.

Millennials (ages 18-34) and members of the Gen Xs and Gen Y age groups (35-54) each made up 35 percent of U.S. air travelers last year, with millennials traveling the most often – six times on average during the year.

More than half of fliers in 2015 came from households with less than $75,000 in income.

Two-thirds of Americans prefer a la carte airline pricing, which allows them to pay for only the services they want (and not spending for services they don’t value as much, like selecting their seat, checking bags, or being served food onboard). Not surprisingly, those from the least affluent households were most accepting of a la carte pricing, almost certainly because it allows them to make choices to forego some services and save relatively small amounts of money.

Respondents ranked those aspects of air travel that they most want airline executives to improve and the results are revealing: 1) onboard comfort (71 percent); 2) customer service (54 percent); and 3) route network/schedule (49 percent). Less important to them were airport improvements (35 percent), fleet (34 percent), onboard technology (32 percent), and website/apps (26 percent).

Price, however, easily remains the most important consideration when deciding whether to travel by air. The total travel price (fare, fees, taxes, parking and incidental travel costs) was the biggest consideration for 85 percent of those who flew last year.

I wrote my first airline-related news story in May 1982 – about the first bankruptcy filing of Braniff International Airways. That led to 26 years covering airlines and related subjects at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and USA TODAY. I followed the industry through the entire...